“I loved how this collection of poetry was focused on a wide range of emotions. Readers will be swept up in the throes of love just as easily as they will be drawn into the shadows. And fans of Edgar Allan Poe will see hints of his inspiration peppered throughout the poems. Including a poem all to his own where LoSchiavo explores the women Poe wrote about.”Behind the Pages

“The collection showcases LoSchiavo’s versatility as a poet as her supernatural entities go from anguished to bizarre to subdued in an instant.”The Prairies Book Review

“This author speaks to me with her knowledge of the right elements of culture and I could see it reaching most almost dedicated to poetry Americans.”Toreado Magazine

“For the title of her second poetry collection LindaAnn LoSchiavo borrows a line from a poem by Edgar Allen Poe. It’s an apt choice, because A Route Obscure and Lonely feels very much like it could have been penned by a modern descendant of this master of the gothic and macabre.”Neon Books

Storylandia, Issue 33, Spring 2020

“Brexit Swan” bittersweet tale about two sisters coming to terms with their opposing personalities. A darkly comic story set in London, UK during the pre-Brexit years. The title symbolises the conflict within the narrator as she establishes her identity outside the restrictive bonds of blood sisterhood.

“Curse of the Lighthouse” “It’s all common sense, and caution,” he was told. Finally, an assignment at a lighthouse on an island sanctuary where peace and quiet would allow him to piece his life back together. If only he had taken the signs seriously. If only he hadn’t gone deaf to the obvious. If only….

“Of Cows and Corn” Best friends Jason and Bill drive from Pittsburgh to Stanford to deliver Bill to graduate school. It’s the end of their friendship, and Jason counts down the days until they part, and he goes home. Driving west, Jason ponders the coming loss to understand it and reconcile himself to it.

“Girl in the TV” In this story about a man’s perception of time and the memories that comprise his life, he learns that a girl he once knew has been strangely erased from existence. He discovers that the same fate might soon befall him.

“Two Wrongs and a Right” Forbidden love. An abusive past. Promises and murder among friends. Christopher made a vow to the woman he can’t forget and to the woman who stole her heart. Their past returns to test the strength of friendship in a world that forces choices that should never have to be made.

With measured strokes, I brushed defiant hair,
Cascading waves that cancer left untouched.
You’d had enough of hospitals, that lack
Of privacy, imagining your home
Serene, secure, free from intrusive pests.

It would shock you to learn we’re not alone.

At dawn, the presence by the sills crispens,
Emerges as the drapes inhale into
A phantom shape. Infernal company,
Omniscient brakeman, timer in cold hands,
Poised, waiting, exhalations nearly through.

Lost in the territory of morphine,
Deciding to eject your breathing tubes,
You tossed away the life-saving device.

Drunk on Time

Past, present, and future on view in a wondrous machine. Everything everywhere in every universe. Better than YouTube, but can this device bring happiness to a young slacker looking for love and life’s meaning?

J. H. Malone has had three careers: High energy particle research in Boston and Los Alamos, social work in San Francisco, and tech writing for startups in Silicon Valley. Over the past years Malone has placed science fiction, crime, romance, and other stories, as well as movie reviews, in two dozen Internet and print publications.

Where to buy: Amazon and Kindle. The Wapshott Press is an Amazon Smile charity. Please remember us when you’re shopping there. Thank you.

Deloris Jaguer is assigned to investigate The Beasthood which many women declare exist. In her search—through various evidence presented—to find the truth, she discovers more about herself and the literal meaning of The Beasthood.

mr pembrooke
mr pembrooke wakes up monday morning and showers and shaves and dresses and fries two eggs and pours orange juice into his los angeles lakers 2010 championship souvenir glass and watches the news until he realizes that twenty-nine eager sixteen year olds are going to sit down in his physics class in twelve minutes and that school is eight minutes away if he coasts through a couple of stop signs but somehow that doesn’t make him stand-up and he wishes regis were still on but michael and sarah’s banter is pretty good and he chuckles for eleven minutes and looks at his watch and can’t take himself away from the kitchen television this morning and that thought occupies a full minute and then another and then his phone rings and it’s the school and he hasn’t missed a single day nor has he been late in thirty-seven years so the voice on the other end seems to believe him when he says that he’s in bed so sick that he slept through the alarm and he makes a coughing laugh with the voice and says you’re right that’s no way for last year’s teacher of the year to act and he says he might be able to make it in tomorrow even though he knows he’s not going to be able to leave the kitchen so he coughs again to start tuesday’s lie and hangs up wondering about retirement whether he’s built up enough and he laughs because whether he has or not he’s going to be retiring because he can’t move and he wants to but he can’t after all this time of helping bright kids like it was a holy mission handed down on tablets but michael and sarah on the television make him laugh so he makes himself butter toast which is his sunday morning treat and he laughs and nods and says to his television tell them michael and then he can’t remember what it was michael saidContinue reading →

Everywhere I look there they are, a set of black eyes staring at me from every corner, from every possible direction. Even when I close my own eyes they’re still there, amid the darkness of my closed eyelids, staring intensely, curiously, admiringly. They have a gleam, a shining I have never before seen; they’re both scary and comforting.
It feels good seeing them staring at me with that intention of theirs, and yet it makes me uncomfortable, because it scares me; what do they want—I wonder often silently—what do they expect of me? There is no certain answer—I can’t tell why the look is there.
I know why the eyes are following me—that’s a simple question that needs not be asked. Yet, what do they want from me, I do not know. I have my own hopes about it, I wish and pray for a specific answer to be true, but I can’t possibly know.Continue reading →

Crime Spree and Other Stories

From journeyman printer to small-time crook, pothead senior to retired nun, Tom Larsen has captured a wide range of life experiences in theses self-contained stories. This collection is an homage to the random fortunes of the baby boom. Whether set in the inner city, suburbia or the northwest coast, Larsen’s colorful cast confirms he knows of what he speaks.

Storylandia 28: Make Me Disappear

Mabel Banner, age fifteen, is a girl on the run. Escaping a dark and tumultuous life in the foster care system in Oklahoma, she runs to Key West, where she becomes first mate on board the sailboat Stella Luna, with the amiable Jake Ennis as captain. In Florida she forges a new life with a new name and tries to forget the circumstances that brought her there. But can Mabel keep her past a secret from Jake? Will the authorities looking for her eventually catch up? And mostly, will she ever have a chance at a normal life? Mabel finds that no matter how hard she tries, she can’t outrun the ghosts that haunt her dreams and the feeling that, eventually, everything she has fought so hard to gain will slip out from between her fingers like the sugar white sand of a Gulf Coast beach.

About the author:
Jennifer Wilson lives in Oklahoma with her husband and seven of her thirteen children. When she is not negotiating peace treaties between the warring factions residing beneath her roof, she enjoys writing and playing the banjo. Occasionally she hides in the closet and drinks whiskey while contemplating the meaning of the universe. She has published four books of poetry and two novels, blogs at crazyreal.net.

2018 Wapshott Press Fundraiser!

Donations can be made at www.WapshottPress.net. The PayPal Giving fund charges us no fees on your donation. And between Giving Tuesday (11/27/2018) and New Year’s Eve, the Giving Fund will add 1% to every donation. That might not seem like much, but the Wapshott Press gets three dimes out of every quarter, so we make it go far. Perks: All donations receive a pdf of the book of your choice; Donations over $100 receive the pdf and a print copy of the book of your choice (can be different books); Over $200 the pdf and 2 copies; Over $300 the pdf and 3 copies; Over $350 the pdf and a full subscription to everything below; Over $500 your own custom half dozen of anything we’ve ever published.

But first, an enormous thank you to our supporters, the Friends of the Wapshott Press:

What we plan to do in 2019 with your generous donations from this year:

Storylandia, Issue 28, Winter 2019
Make me Disappear, by Jennifer Wilson
Mabel Banner, age fifteen, is a girl on the run. Escaping a dark and tumultuous life in the foster care system in Oklahoma, she runs to Key West, where she becomes first mate on board the sailboat Stella Luna, with the amiable Jake Ennis as captain. In Florida she forges a new life with a new name and tries to forget the circumstances that brought her there. But can Mabel keep her past a secret from Jake? Will the authorities looking for her eventually catch up? And mostly, will she ever have a chance at a normal life? Mabel finds that no matter how hard she tries, she can’t outrun the ghosts that haunt her dreams and the feeling that, eventually, everything she has fought so hard to gain will slip out from between her fingers like the sugar white sand of a Gulf Coast beach. (excerpt below)

Jennifer Wilson lives in Texas with her husband and ten of her thirteen children. When she is not negotiating peace treaties between the warring factions residing beneath her roof, she enjoys writing and playing the banjo. Occasionally she hides in the closet and drinks whiskey while contemplating the meaning of the universe. She has published four books of poetry and two novels, blogs at crazyreal.net.

Storylandia, Issue 29, Spring 2018
Crime Spree and Other Stories, by Thomas Larsen
From journeyman printer to small-time crook, pothead senior to retired nun, Tom Larsen has captured a wide range of life experiences in theses self-contained stories. This collection is an homage to the random fortunes of the baby boom. Whether set in the inner city, suburbia or the northwest coast, Larsen’s colorful cast confirms he knows of what he speaks. (excerpt below)

Tom Larsen lives in the Pennsport section of South Philadelphia, home to Mummers, Flyers and that screw you slant that made the city great. He and his wife lived in Pennsport for a decade in the 90’s then moved away, then moved back again. Where the heart is, yo. For a writer auditioning characters, the 19148 zip is a casting gold mine.

Poetrylandia, Issue 1 (our first volume of poetry!)
Required Silence, by Dawn Cunningham
Women go through a particular silence which has been a requirement in society for generations. This required silence is a cause of struggles in a woman’s survival. The silence is hard to overcome—if a woman ever overcomes it. Ridding the silence is a continuous fight even after a woman finds a way to overcome. (excerpt below)

Dawn Cunningham grew up listening to her grandmother’s stories of the family, which led Ms. Cunningham to write her stories, mostly in poetry. At a young age, she fell in love with Edgar Allen Poe’s stories and poems. Then in her college years, she came to love surrealism—especially Max Ernst and Salvador Dali. She shares her love of literature and arts with her four children, thirteen grandchildren (and, soon, another grandchild), and with her partner, Christopher.

Storylandia, Issue 30, Summer 2019
Letters to S, by George Gad Economou
A love story that challenges beliefs, lifestyles, and desires.
He searches for a replacement to his greatest love (whom he lost way too soon to reasons better left untold); she seeks for a safe harbor to shelter her from her tumultuous relationship that rapidly reaches its end. Passion and lust are born the moment they lay eyes on each other; however, their story quickly turns into a tale of brutal irony and of obstacles that cannot be overcome. (excerpt below)

George Gad Economou, born in 1990 in Athens, Greece, has a Master’s in Philosophy of Science from Aarhus University and is currently residing in Athens, working as a freelance writer. His stories have appeared in various online outlets, such as Spillwords and Jumbelbook.

Storylandia, Issue 31, Autumn 2019
The Beasthood, by Dawn Cunningham
Deloris Jaguer is assigned to investigate The Beasthood which many women declare exists. In her search—through various evidence presented—to find the truth, she discovers more about herself and the literal meaning of The Beasthood. (excerpt below)

See Poetrylandia 1 for Dawn’s bio.

2018 Wapshott Press Fundraiser! Donations can be made at www.WapshottPress.net. The PayPal Giving fund charges us no fees on your donation. And between Giving Tuesday (11/27/2018) and New Year’s Eve, the Giving Fund will add 1% to every donation. That might not seem like much, but the Wapshott Press gets three dimes out of every quarter, so we make it go far. Perks: All donations receive a pdf of the book of your choice; Donations over $100 receive the pdf and a print copy of the book of your choice (can be different books); Over $200 the pdf and 2 copies; Over $300 the pdf and 3 copies; Over $350 the pdf and a full subscription to everything below; Over $500 your own custom half dozen of anything we’ve ever published.

In honor of the Wapshott Press annual fundraiser that officially starts on Giving Tuesday, November 27 this year because PayPal Giving Fund will add 1% to every donation, I’ve started a podcast. Here’s the webpage www.WapshottPress.org/2018-fundraiser for the perks, future plans, and the whole lovely story. Also, I’ve started a podcast because I’m told that’s the thing one still does these days. The podcast if called An Editor’s Work is Never Done (ooh, I have 2 followers already!) to help promote all things Wapshott Press, including this fundrasier. I haven’t officially launched it at Wapshott Press, but you, lucky Hackenblog readers, can hear my maiden voyage here at SoundCloud. Well, I guess I can embed the player

Posted onOctober 27, 2018|Comments Off on J Bloglandia 3-1 The Dark Shadows Issue is now on sale! The wait is over!

Our first Journal of Bloglandia issue in nine years!

The Journal of Bloglandia
The Dark Shadows Issue

“As a little girl in the early ’70s, I would come home from school every day and turn on the TV to watch reruns of what we called ‘Barnabas Collins,’ the show about the vampire.”

And 40 years later, she watched it all again from the very beginning. It started as a brief blog experiment: watch and review the earliest episodes of the 1960s soap opera Dark Shadows before the arrival of vampire Barnabas Collins… but then it kept going. In the end, Kathryn L. Ramage watched the entire series of more than 1200 episodes and wrote about the experience. This book presents the highlights of those reviews.

Where to buy: Amazon(eligible for free shipping). Not available in eBook format.
The Wapshott Press, publisher of Storylandia, is now an Amazon Charity. Yay! So if you could please choose Wapshott Press as your charity when you’re shopping at Amazon, it will help us a lot. Here’s the link to make Wapshott Press your charity, and you only have to register once.

Where to buy: Amazon(eligible for free shipping). Not available in eBook format.

The Wapshott Press, publisher of Storylandia, is now an Amazon Charity. Yay! So if you could please choose Wapshott Press as your charity when you’re shopping at Amazon, it will help us a lot. Here’s the link to make Wapshott Press your charity, and you only have to register once.

Help the Wapshott Press publish books that should be published! The Wapshott Press, publisher of Storylandia, is now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Tax deductible donations can be made here: Wapshott Press Donations and thank you so much for your support! (PS. Paypal takes zero commissions from your donation to the Wapshott Press.)

News from the Cheltenham literature festival (or Cheltenham Literature Festival, if I was punctuating this article)

“She (Dolly Alderton) said it was Darcy who first came up with ‘negging’, a phrase which has caught on after being coined by the American writer Neil Strauss in his book The Game: Penetrating The Secret Society of Pick-Up Artists.

“Negging is the act of emotional manipulation whereby a person makes a deliberate backhanded compliment, or flirtatious remark, to undermine someone’s confidence and increase the need for approval.

Well, there are only so many properly punctuating American writers to pen things like “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” or “The Jungle” or “Grapes of Wrath” (alas). Suck it, Brits, until you learn to punctuate like Americans, you’ll just have to whine at someone else. I have semicolons and em dashes to wrangle.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE OVER THERE? STOP WHINING! American novelists reviewing each other are (is?) hysterically funny. And the best we can get now that Elaine’s is closed and so no many American author fist fights anymore, alas.

I’m never going to the Cheltenham Literature Festival; it would be too traumatic (for everyone).

Please consider a donation to the Wapshott Press nonprofit so we can keep publishing books that should be published. If you feel like saving up for it, PayPal will add 1% to whatever you donate between December 1 and 31, 2018. The Wapshott Press gets 3 nickels out of every dime, so that 1% extra really does make a difference. Expect the unexpected, and these little reminders until the end of the year. Thank you. Your favorite editor, Ginger Mayerson

Vistula

Private Johnny Zewiski stands above a polluted river, his hands tied behind his back. It’s a cold afternoon in war-torn Warsaw, Poland. In front of him, beyond the river, smoldering ruins echo the sound of small arms fire. Behind him, a Nazi machine gun crew hastily assembles their weapon, anxious to finish the execution and get back to shelter.

Ex-private, actually. Johnny had deserted his post and fled his Army unit under wartime circumstances, thereby sealing his fate, no matter who took the trouble to capture and put him front of a firing squad. He fled with honorable intentions, he thought, but the war didn’t care about honor.

His only friend, Jakub, another displaced Polish-American, stands next to him, kvetching about unrequited miracles.

Johnny’s journey, from his boyhood home in Allentown, Pennsylvania to Warsaw, is a crazy ride of miraculous encounters. It begins in Tunisia, then across the North Sea, through the heart of Nazi-occupied Poland, and winds up in the arms of the embattled Polish resistance who are desperately trying to defend their capital until the Allied armies can save them from the Nazi onslaught.

He dreams of home while waiting for the bullets to fly; his mother and father who cried while their former homeland turned to rubble, his brothers who warned him not to go near the recruiting station and his girlfriend who followed him in his tortured dreams and begged him to come home.

When the machine gun fires, Johnny’s fate takes yet another turn and he begins a new journey that’s just as dangerous and ill-conceived as the last.

Where to buy: Amazon(eligible for free shipping) and Kindle.
The Wapshott Press, publisher of Storylandia, is now an Amazon Charity. Yay! So if you could please choose Wapshott Press as your charity when you’re shopping at Amazon, it will help us a lot. Here’s the link to make Wapshott Press your charity, and you only have to register once.

Where to buy: Amazon(eligible for free shipping) and Kindle.
The Wapshott Press, publisher of Storylandia, is now an Amazon Charity. Yay! So if you could please choose Wapshott Press as your charity when you’re shopping at Amazon, it will help us a lot. Here’s the link to make Wapshott Press your charity, and you only have to register once.

Help the Wapshott Press publish books that should be published! The Wapshott Press, publisher of Storylandia, is now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Tax deductible donations can be made here: Wapshott Press Donations and thank you so much for your support! (PS. Paypal takes zero commissions from your donation to the Wapshott Press.)

Ah, the things I do for the Wapshott Press… In hopes of bringing our books and journals to more and more worthy readers, I’ve been studying SEO. Yes, me, your beloved editor, Ginger Mayerson, has been learning things I never even knew I wanted to know. Well, there is an upside to all this, in addition to better SEO: I invented a new word that doesn’t seem to be found on Google.

Things the Google spiders and bots like to eat for improved SEO health could be called

BOTNIP or botnip or bot-nip (yes, you got it, like catnip or cat-nip)

Yes. Very much yes. Please, experts in all things, fact-check the hell out of me. I love it.

Thanks, Freddy Tran Nager and his Atomic Tango for getting me hipper to the SEO scene. A painless, useful, information packed session. I feel so much smarter, happier, and better-looking, too.

Marchers’ Season

“As a child in Arkansas in the 1950s, Gray Alsobrook watched his father drive away and abandon his family. So when Gray Alsobrook came home from the Vietnam War as a young man and started his own family with his wife, Doreen, he determined to put down tightly-holding roots in the first town where he got a decent job, even if it was a town with a racially troubled past like Meadowview, Alabama. Almost two decades later, their youngest child, Joe, enters the home-stretch of his senior year of high school. When the town erupts into protest and anger after the school board fires the town’s first African-Amercian schools superintendent and Joe is right in the middle of it all, Gray’s dedication to putting down roots and building a stable life is put to the test.”

Help the Wapshott Press publish books that should be published! The Wapshott Press, publisher of Storylandia, is now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Tax deductible donations can be made here: Wapshott Press Donations and thank you so much for your support! (PS. Paypal takes zero commissions from your donation to the Wapshott Press.)

We are all Falling Towards the Centre of the Earth

Best to put him out of his misery. The Spoiler stepped into view and picked up the knife.
“You can’t touch that! The cops will need it for evidence,” said the man.
The Spoiler winced. She’d never liked a Texan drawl.
“They won’t,” said the Spoiler, “the knife doesn’t exist yet.”
Enjoying the man’s confusion, the Spoiler continued. “It hasn’t been manufactured yet. It will spend some years in a kitchen drawer a few streets away from here. And this is what it’ll look like in eleven years’ time, when it’s been used to cut your throat with.”
He was gawping at her; she was the maniac.
The Spoiler held up her free hand. “Not by me. I don’t kill people. I just bring tidings. Shall I tell you who does kill you?”
It wasn’t really a question; of course she was going to tell him.

The second short story collection from British writer Julie Travis presents nine new tales of horror, dark fantasy and Surrealism. This is where you’ll find the landscape is a living thing, that monuments are built to the future and where Death is just the beginning. Enjoy contemporary fairy tales mingling amongst stories of escape from desperate times and a culture where difference is seen as a blessing, not a threat.

“A feeling akin to sanctity… a reverence for the bleak and wild landscape… a kind of pantheism or Gaia worship. There’s a whiff of writers like Machen or Blackwood, echoes of Barker, a combination of ghost story and folklore.”
Peter Tennant, Black Static

We are all Falling Towards the Centre of the Earth
ISBN: 978-1-942007-18-0

Help the Wapshott Press publish books that should be published! The Wapshott Press, publisher of Storylandia, is now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Tax deductible donations can be made here: Wapshott Press Donations and thank you so much for your support! (PS. Paypal takes zero commissions from your donation to the Wapshott Press.)

Comments Off on Now on Sale: We are all Falling Towards Centre of the Earth

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The Wapshott Press is now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit

Please donate to the Wapshott Press Thank you so much for your support. All donations are tax deductible. (We prefer to use PayPal for online donations because they give us all a break on their fees for charitable donations.)